- 164
Gustave Moreau French, 1826-1898
Description
- Gustave Moreau
- Sainte Élisabeth de Hongrie or Le Miracle des roses
- signed Gustave Moreau l.l.
- watercolour on paper
- 27.5 by 19cm., 11 by 7 1/2 in. (image size)
Provenance
Charles Hayem, Paris
Sale: Collection Mme Ch. Hayem: Tableaux modernes, Hôtel Drouot Paris, 7-9 April 1924, lot 46
Sabourdin Collection
Sale: Galliéra Paris, 22 October 1968, lot 5
Sale: Sotheby's Parke-Bernet New York, 12 June 1980, lot 54
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner
Exhibited
Tokyo, International Symbolist Exhibition, n.d.
New York, Barry Friedman Ltd., Visions and Reveries: Symbolist Works on Paper, 1982
Literature
Pierre-Louis Mathieu, Gustave Moreau. Monographie et nouveau catalogue de l'oeuvre achevé, Paris-Courbevoie, 1998, no. 219, discussed and illustrated (erroneously as having been sold Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 2 May 1973)
Catalogue Note
Executed in 1879.
The present work encapsulates all the qualities that make Moreau’s watercolours so special: vibrant, sumptuous colours applied in an almost cloisonné technique, masterly use of the brush, delicacy of execution and fine detail. Moreau mainly used watercolour as a medium to explore the potential of colour. The stunning colour harmonies in Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie lend this work a striking freshness.
As critic Charles Blanc wrote of Moreau’s watercolours in Le Temps: ’One would have to coin a word for the occasion if one wished to characterize the talent of Gustave Moreau, the word colourism for example, which would well convey all that is excessive, superb and prodigious in his love of colour. (…) It is as if one were in the presence of an illuminant artist who had been a jeweller before becoming a painter, and who, having yielded to the intoxication of colour, had ground rubies, sapphires, emeralds, topazes, opals, pearls and mother of pearl to make up his palette.’ (Charles Blanc, Le Temps, 15th May 1881).
In his student days, Moreau had ‘spent long hours in the Bibliothèque Impériale poring over illuminated manuscripts and sets of Persian, Indian and Japanese prints. From this rich store of visual impressions he drew motifs which went to create an imaginary archeology; combining elements from different periods and religions, he worked out a new iconography of the old myths which mankind had handed down from age to age’ (Mathieu, p. 14). Among the plethora of religious iconographies he absorbed, the legend of Saint Elisabeth of Hungary and the miracle of the roses with which she is associated would have attracted Moreau for the potential it offered for the rich use of colour.
Elisabeth was born a princess in 1207, daughter to King Andrew of Hungary, and later married Prince Louis of Thuringia. Against the wishes of her family and courtiers Elisabeth devoted herself to tending to the sick and poor, giving alms to all those in need throughout her husband's empire. Her association with roses stems from an incident when her husband lifted her mantle during one of her visits to the poor and he saw that the food she was carrying had been miraculously changed to roses. Elizabeth's husband, who supported her charity, is depicted kneeling at the Saint's feet surrounded by the roses that have fallen from her cloak.
Charles Hayem, the present work's first owner, was the most important collector of Moreau watercolours of his day. Among the works in his collection were Phaéton and L'Apparition, which he gifted to the Musée du Luxembourg following Moreau's death in 1898, and which remain in the Louvre to this day.
We are grateful to Pierre-Louis Mathieu for his assistance cataloguing this work.